Thinking back now it doesn't seem like such a big deal. Double doors into the gym with a single pane of glass in each door. I could see kids sitting against the wall through those windows and it seemed like, for just a moment, I was looking through the eyes of a popular kid. Jesse opened the door for me and I walked in looking around like I had never seen the gym before. Jesse led me over to a group that was sitting behind the back board and we joined them. I looked up to the bleachers to see my group all sitting down where they usually sat. I could be imagining that they were pointing and snickering but that is how I remember it. I remember being so mad at that group that I don't remember how things went on the basketball floor that morning before school. They must have gone pretty good though because I never did sit in the bleachers again.
Things really started to change for me because of this change in friends. Jesse and I would bring our skateboards to school and skate during lunch or after school when I didn't have practice. There always seemed to be a group around watching what we were doing and because of it I was becoming more confident. I had always been very outgoing but I wasn't very confident. Now I was exuding confidence and things started to click for me.
I made friends with a couple of girls that I thought had to be the most popular girls in town, Tina and Jolie. The best thing was that they seemed to like hanging out with Jesse and I. It was during this time that I started to not care what people thought of me. The four of us would hang out during school and just have a blast. One day we all stood in an alcove by our shop class and acted like we were mannequins. Everyone thought that it was so funny and we really had a blast with it. Another time we were waiting for a basketball game to start and the opposing teams fans were just showing up. We decided to introduce ourselves to everyone who came in. It was funny but after awhile it got boring so I started introducing myself as a different person from different states to everyone. As one person would walk in I would say "Hi, I'm Clint from Texas!" and to the person with them I would say "Hi, I'm Mike from Florida!". Most of the people would laugh and go on there way but the girls found it funny and during the game I kept having girls come by and introducing themselves just so I could make up another funny name or place that I was from.
I really became someone that I wanted to be during that time. Qualities that I had but wasn't confident enough to use were now coming naturally to me. I began to play this person all of the time no matter where I was. Jesse and I would meet by the school in the morning and we would walk to seminary together. We would get there a few minutes before it started and decide that we should skip it. Well everyone had seen us so when they called roll someone would say that we were there but that we must be ditching. Our teacher would then come looking for us and we had such a blast hiding from him because he would get so mad.
Seminary was at the church in the early morning and we were always getting into trouble for wearing clothes that were not appropriate. Unlike girls who would get in trouble for wearing to little we would get in trouble for wearing our pants to big or some crazy shirt. I had a 26Red t-shirt that I loved, it had a burlesque girl on the back with the company logo. I wore it the first time and my seminary teacher told me I had to turn it inside out and that I shouldn't wear it again. After that I decided that I needed to wear it everyday that I could, to the point that he kicked me out of seminary until I could dress the part. This display of defiance became my new mantra and from that point on I stared into the face of the establishment and gave them the finger.
Jesse and I had an English class together and our teacher was really cool but he seemed to not like us very much. So we would goof off in his class more then we probably should have. One day he gave us some free time so Jesse and I put on our backpacks and sat on the heat register at the far end of the room. We were talking about how cool it would be to skydive when we got the idea to simulate it right there in class. We jumped up on the heat register and jumped off with our backpacks acting as though they were parachutes. We flew around the room doing different maneuvers all the while Mr. Fewkes was yelling at us to stop. We pretended to pull the zip cord and float to the ground while other kids in the class were laughing at us. Jesse and I were sent out into the hall where we had to spend the rest of the period for being disruptive. Another time we decided to drag race our desks while Mr. Fewkes was gone, so we got a couple of kids to race against. One of us sat in the desk and the other pushed. The one pushing would push the desk about five feet or so and stop and see how fast they could get the desk going and if it could reach the wall. It did a few times and when Mr. Fewkes came back to the classroom we had busted two desks and broken a bookshelf. For that we all got a call to our parents and I got in big trouble.
That wasn't the only time that I made a fool out of myself. One day it was raining really hard and there happened to be a puddle between the main building and the annex. I decided that I had to slide through it after lunch right before going to class. Jesse decided that if I was going to then he need to as well. We both ran and slid through this puddle as a group of kids cheered us on. We went to class soaking wet and with little pieces of grass all over. After class I told Jesse that I was going to do that between every class for the rest of the day, and I would have if it wasn't that we ended up getting into trouble about our third time through and being sent home for the day.
Showing posts with label personal Story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal Story. Show all posts
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
The early years
It sounded like a good idea at that time but isn't that how all great stories start. No one ever starts a story like "I heard what my buddy was saying but deep down I knew I shouldn't go, so I stayed home" or "my parents would be ticked if they found out so I better not go". No, all great stories start the same with a phrase like "it sounded like a good idea at the time" or "I didn't think we would get caught". My life is full of these phrases, stories, and mischief and I wouldn't change it.
My stories start around the age of 13 or so. Before that I was a great upstanding Mormon youth always going to my church meetings and attending all of my school classes. School came hard for me but I liked going because of recess. I didn't work hard at school which is probably why it wasn't easy for me. Most of my teachers left comments for my parents saying that I was too talkative in class and I was forever being told to turn around and stop talking. I made it through elementary school without too much damage which wasn't easy given the way I looked. I see pictures of myself from my early years and think that it is great that you don't worry about looks when you are that young because I was no model. I had ruddy skin with a lot of freckles. My hair was brown and really thick so it didn't lay down like the other kids, in fact it stood straight up. I guess that is why I kept it shaved for along time. I did grow it out so I could put a part in it while I was in grade school but that looked really dorky. Also when I was in sixth grade my dad gave me a Mohawk that was fairly long. He shaved both sides of my head and left the top down the middle. He also cut designs in the side of my head which was customary for the time at least that is what I tell people when they see the pictures. I would go around flipping my hair back and forth from one side of my head to the other until one day a girl told me it looked stupid and I immediately stopped.
I never really had a lot of friends, and I think the reason for that was because I was a geek. I mean I am still a geek now but I hide it well. There is a picture of me in second grade and I am wearing a Ricks College t-shirt with black pants, that are obviously too small, and slip on shoes that look like Vans but I was not that cool so they are not. This is how I spent my entire grade school and most of my middle school life. I would wear BYU shirts and jerseys to school and people would make fun of me. I also wore hand me downs from my older cousins which I thought was cool but they were all out of style. Hand me downs were an important part of my childhood and I can remember pulling out clothes from a huge garbage bag. My brother and I would fight over who got the Nike t-shirt or who was going to get the Girbaud jeans. I am sure it looked like dogs fighting over the last piece of meat. My grandmother also bought me a pair of light blue jeans that only old men would wear but for a time they were the only jeans that I had so I wore them and kids would make fun of me. I was not into sports and not very coordinated at the time so I didn't play basketball with the kids and I mostly hung out with girls all the time. I loved Star Wars and other sci-fi shows and would regularly check out books about alien abduction and big foot. At the time I hadn't grown to know that these things were not socially acceptable and that if I wanted to fit in with the "cool" kids that I couldn't talk about them. This lasted until I was in the fifth grade and I remember a couple of kids making fun of me and I decided that I wasn't going to say anything anymore because every time I did I got laughed at. Later that same year a kid asked me to play basketball with them during recess and later told me it was because I was pretty cool when I wasn't talking. That lasted for a few years but eventually I had to speak up.
As I maneuvered through the last few years of grade school I became increasingly aware that I was different from the so called popular group that I was trying so hard to become a part of. I wanted to so bad to be asked to birthday parties and hang out with this group of kids that were so much cooler than I was. From the outside it looked as if everything in their lives were perfect and I wanted that yet I was not perfect. I didn't wear the right clothes, I was the oldest so no one was there to show me what to do, I was not the best looking, and my family did not have money. These things were playing against me and I knew that there was not any way that I was going to be able to break through this barrier. I then decided, at eleven mind you, that it was going to take to a lot to make the transition so I resigned myself to the "lower class" of which I would never break free. I made friends in this class all of who were also Mormon and I went to church with. We would hang out and have sleep overs like everyone else but they were not as great and grand as the upper class of kids. We never had pool parties, we never had girl-boy parties, and no one from the upper class ever showed up at our houses to hang out with us. We weren't sad about it at all, we knew where we stood in life and for the most part, we were fine with that.
I had a great time with these guys that I considered my friends but looking back I was a parasite. I didn't bring anything to the relationship and they all knew it, unfortunately I didn't. Not until years later did I realize what was going on. Not even now do I fully understand the complexity of this relationship and how it has affected my behavior, friendships, and relationships with others. I can't explain the friendship that the seven of us had but I apparently was getting more out of it then they were. During the four years that we all were friends we did a lot of things. We made countless snowboarding trips, we played a lot of street hockey, and we did a lot girl watching since that is what you do when you are on the outside of the popular group. We really did have a lot of fun and since we went to church together the fun never stopped until one day it ended for me.
I had played baseball all growing up, from tee-ball to little league and all of my buddies had played too but there comes a time when you have to decide if you want to continue. If you continue practices become more like practice and more competitive and some kids don't want that. I didn't really have a choice considering my dad was my coach. I am not saying that he forced me to play but any coaches kid will tell you that there is some pressure to continue. I wanted to continue but when my friends all decided to stop playing and I questioned whether I should as well. It was hard to make that break since I now had practice and they could go hang out after school. I also started playing football at this time and they didn't so through the spring and fall I was busy with practice and games. It was tough but we would still hang out on weekends and at church but now I was on the outside since I hadn't been in on the newest adventure. I tried to make it up by inviting them to other things. We once had my dad drop us off in Hailey to Rollerblade the paved trails and skate at the skate park. We had a lot of fun and even talked about doing it again but it never happened.
When we reached junior high we were on different tracks. I spent as much time as I could with these guys since it was a new environment but I still had other responsibilities. Through seventh grade things pretty much stayed the same and we continued to hang out but when we hit eighth grade things started to change. I noticed that they would hide from me in the morning before school and during our lunch break. I never really thought it was about me until one morning I caught them watching for me and when I showed up they took off and hid in a class room. We didn't have a lot of classes together but the ones we did they would sit next to each other and I would be left to find my own seat. This year was a hard one for me since I had no idea what was going on with my friends and I didn't have any time to find out either.
During this time I started to skateboard and I quit rollerblading. My brother and I would skate in our driveway every day trying to learn new tricks. We started becoming friends with another skater from Twin named Jesse that went to the same church as us but that didn't go very often. He was my age and we were in a few classes together. We started spending a lot of time together skating around town. I took skating lessons from Jesse since he had been skating for along time and knew what he was doing, I learned more then just skating though. I learned how to dress as a skater, I would wear the biggest pants I could find and cut them off around the bottom of my shoes. I would wear a long sleeve shirt under my short sleeved shirt even if it was hot. I started growing my hair long and parting it in the middle of my head. I learned how skaters treated each other and in turn how they treated those who didn't skate. We were always helping skaters with things like tricks to moving quarter pipes. If a skater needed your help you helped him no questions asked, on the other hand you didn't talk to posers. Jesse really became one of my best friends and we hung out as much as possible.
Jesse really helped me during that time because he had crossed over the popular barrier because there were only a few skaters back then and everybody thought that he was totally cool. My other friends were still pulling tricks on me all time and I was getting really frustrated and confused since we had been friends since we were in grade school. I was fighting a losing battle in my head, I wanted to stay friends with these guys but I knew that they were trying to make a break. I knew that they didn't want me around any more but I didn't have enough confidence to find new friends. One morning I walked into school from seminary and when my buddies saw me they took off and hid under the bleachers. I was devastated and didn't know what to do until Jesse asked if I wanted to go and sit with him on the basketball floor. There were two parts to our gym where everyone hung out before school started. The popular group sat on the floor of the gym around the basketball court and swapped stories and test answers in their Banana Republic shirts and perfect hair. The rest of the school sat in the upper deck of the bleachers and wished they could sit on the basketball floor. From the main level there was a split staircase where you could go up to the bleachers on the left or down to the floor on the right.
I sat there looking up at the bleacher knowing that I belonged up there, but recognizing that this was my one opportunity to make a name for myself.
My stories start around the age of 13 or so. Before that I was a great upstanding Mormon youth always going to my church meetings and attending all of my school classes. School came hard for me but I liked going because of recess. I didn't work hard at school which is probably why it wasn't easy for me. Most of my teachers left comments for my parents saying that I was too talkative in class and I was forever being told to turn around and stop talking. I made it through elementary school without too much damage which wasn't easy given the way I looked. I see pictures of myself from my early years and think that it is great that you don't worry about looks when you are that young because I was no model. I had ruddy skin with a lot of freckles. My hair was brown and really thick so it didn't lay down like the other kids, in fact it stood straight up. I guess that is why I kept it shaved for along time. I did grow it out so I could put a part in it while I was in grade school but that looked really dorky. Also when I was in sixth grade my dad gave me a Mohawk that was fairly long. He shaved both sides of my head and left the top down the middle. He also cut designs in the side of my head which was customary for the time at least that is what I tell people when they see the pictures. I would go around flipping my hair back and forth from one side of my head to the other until one day a girl told me it looked stupid and I immediately stopped.
I never really had a lot of friends, and I think the reason for that was because I was a geek. I mean I am still a geek now but I hide it well. There is a picture of me in second grade and I am wearing a Ricks College t-shirt with black pants, that are obviously too small, and slip on shoes that look like Vans but I was not that cool so they are not. This is how I spent my entire grade school and most of my middle school life. I would wear BYU shirts and jerseys to school and people would make fun of me. I also wore hand me downs from my older cousins which I thought was cool but they were all out of style. Hand me downs were an important part of my childhood and I can remember pulling out clothes from a huge garbage bag. My brother and I would fight over who got the Nike t-shirt or who was going to get the Girbaud jeans. I am sure it looked like dogs fighting over the last piece of meat. My grandmother also bought me a pair of light blue jeans that only old men would wear but for a time they were the only jeans that I had so I wore them and kids would make fun of me. I was not into sports and not very coordinated at the time so I didn't play basketball with the kids and I mostly hung out with girls all the time. I loved Star Wars and other sci-fi shows and would regularly check out books about alien abduction and big foot. At the time I hadn't grown to know that these things were not socially acceptable and that if I wanted to fit in with the "cool" kids that I couldn't talk about them. This lasted until I was in the fifth grade and I remember a couple of kids making fun of me and I decided that I wasn't going to say anything anymore because every time I did I got laughed at. Later that same year a kid asked me to play basketball with them during recess and later told me it was because I was pretty cool when I wasn't talking. That lasted for a few years but eventually I had to speak up.
As I maneuvered through the last few years of grade school I became increasingly aware that I was different from the so called popular group that I was trying so hard to become a part of. I wanted to so bad to be asked to birthday parties and hang out with this group of kids that were so much cooler than I was. From the outside it looked as if everything in their lives were perfect and I wanted that yet I was not perfect. I didn't wear the right clothes, I was the oldest so no one was there to show me what to do, I was not the best looking, and my family did not have money. These things were playing against me and I knew that there was not any way that I was going to be able to break through this barrier. I then decided, at eleven mind you, that it was going to take to a lot to make the transition so I resigned myself to the "lower class" of which I would never break free. I made friends in this class all of who were also Mormon and I went to church with. We would hang out and have sleep overs like everyone else but they were not as great and grand as the upper class of kids. We never had pool parties, we never had girl-boy parties, and no one from the upper class ever showed up at our houses to hang out with us. We weren't sad about it at all, we knew where we stood in life and for the most part, we were fine with that.
I had a great time with these guys that I considered my friends but looking back I was a parasite. I didn't bring anything to the relationship and they all knew it, unfortunately I didn't. Not until years later did I realize what was going on. Not even now do I fully understand the complexity of this relationship and how it has affected my behavior, friendships, and relationships with others. I can't explain the friendship that the seven of us had but I apparently was getting more out of it then they were. During the four years that we all were friends we did a lot of things. We made countless snowboarding trips, we played a lot of street hockey, and we did a lot girl watching since that is what you do when you are on the outside of the popular group. We really did have a lot of fun and since we went to church together the fun never stopped until one day it ended for me.
I had played baseball all growing up, from tee-ball to little league and all of my buddies had played too but there comes a time when you have to decide if you want to continue. If you continue practices become more like practice and more competitive and some kids don't want that. I didn't really have a choice considering my dad was my coach. I am not saying that he forced me to play but any coaches kid will tell you that there is some pressure to continue. I wanted to continue but when my friends all decided to stop playing and I questioned whether I should as well. It was hard to make that break since I now had practice and they could go hang out after school. I also started playing football at this time and they didn't so through the spring and fall I was busy with practice and games. It was tough but we would still hang out on weekends and at church but now I was on the outside since I hadn't been in on the newest adventure. I tried to make it up by inviting them to other things. We once had my dad drop us off in Hailey to Rollerblade the paved trails and skate at the skate park. We had a lot of fun and even talked about doing it again but it never happened.
When we reached junior high we were on different tracks. I spent as much time as I could with these guys since it was a new environment but I still had other responsibilities. Through seventh grade things pretty much stayed the same and we continued to hang out but when we hit eighth grade things started to change. I noticed that they would hide from me in the morning before school and during our lunch break. I never really thought it was about me until one morning I caught them watching for me and when I showed up they took off and hid in a class room. We didn't have a lot of classes together but the ones we did they would sit next to each other and I would be left to find my own seat. This year was a hard one for me since I had no idea what was going on with my friends and I didn't have any time to find out either.
During this time I started to skateboard and I quit rollerblading. My brother and I would skate in our driveway every day trying to learn new tricks. We started becoming friends with another skater from Twin named Jesse that went to the same church as us but that didn't go very often. He was my age and we were in a few classes together. We started spending a lot of time together skating around town. I took skating lessons from Jesse since he had been skating for along time and knew what he was doing, I learned more then just skating though. I learned how to dress as a skater, I would wear the biggest pants I could find and cut them off around the bottom of my shoes. I would wear a long sleeve shirt under my short sleeved shirt even if it was hot. I started growing my hair long and parting it in the middle of my head. I learned how skaters treated each other and in turn how they treated those who didn't skate. We were always helping skaters with things like tricks to moving quarter pipes. If a skater needed your help you helped him no questions asked, on the other hand you didn't talk to posers. Jesse really became one of my best friends and we hung out as much as possible.
Jesse really helped me during that time because he had crossed over the popular barrier because there were only a few skaters back then and everybody thought that he was totally cool. My other friends were still pulling tricks on me all time and I was getting really frustrated and confused since we had been friends since we were in grade school. I was fighting a losing battle in my head, I wanted to stay friends with these guys but I knew that they were trying to make a break. I knew that they didn't want me around any more but I didn't have enough confidence to find new friends. One morning I walked into school from seminary and when my buddies saw me they took off and hid under the bleachers. I was devastated and didn't know what to do until Jesse asked if I wanted to go and sit with him on the basketball floor. There were two parts to our gym where everyone hung out before school started. The popular group sat on the floor of the gym around the basketball court and swapped stories and test answers in their Banana Republic shirts and perfect hair. The rest of the school sat in the upper deck of the bleachers and wished they could sit on the basketball floor. From the main level there was a split staircase where you could go up to the bleachers on the left or down to the floor on the right.
I sat there looking up at the bleacher knowing that I belonged up there, but recognizing that this was my one opportunity to make a name for myself.
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